


Denouement

by lynndyre



Category: The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:09:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene between Big Ben and the final scene of the movie.  Dawson looks after Basil's wounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Denouement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarahenany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahenany/gifts).



> I loved your request, and I also always wanted to see more of the aftermath of the fight on Big Ben! This is not quite 'fighting for his life', but I hope you'll enjoy it!

The propeller threatened to tear the edges of our flag as it drew closer, rendering the last few seconds a desperate struggle to pull Basil in. Finally he flung out his nearest paw, and I caught his wrist, Flaversham beside me, and together we hauled Basil upwards by the torn shoulders of his coat. Olivia had moved back when her father told her to, little fingers wrapped in the flag on the far side, and I'd wager her slight weight was the only thing that kept us from overbalancing entirely. Then the propeller was falling away into the fog, and Basil lay slumped and panting on the planks of our improvised dirigible. 

Mr Flaversham moved back, manning our balloons once more to allow us a safe descent. He caught up Olivia against his legs when she would have rushed forward, but Basil clutched at my arm, and I pressed my handkerchief to the worst of his wounds. 

"Oh, Mister Basil!"

"I'm alright, everything is quite alright, at last." He was still grinning, even as dark blood soaked outwards through the brown of his coat, leaning back against my grip to watch the clouds into which the fiend Ratigan had fallen.

Mr Flaversham returned our little flying raft to the grounds of Buckingham Palace, though I confess the strongest image my mind retains of the journey was Basil's long fingers, held tight between Olivia's little paws while I staunched his bleeding.

It was well into the small hours when we again reached Baker Street, our escape from the crowds of Queen Moustoria's Jubilee having been effected by a tall and very fat well-dressed mouse with steel-grey fur. He found us a carriage straight to the Marylebone Road corner, and watched us with an intense look behind lazy eyes as Flaversham and I marshaled Basil aboard. It was not until much later, when Basil was presented to our Queen, that I learned our helper that night had been his older brother.

Within the flat, I left Mr Flaversham and little Olivia to the kind, welcoming paws of Mrs Judson, and drew Basil away into his bedchamber. It took some little time to manage properly the job I had begun haphazardly in the middle of the sky.

I tied off the last of the bandages, and settled Basil more firmly on his side, bracing him with the second pillow so that he shouldn't roll and bring pressure to his wounds. I tucked his tail up beneath the blanket, draping it over one fine-boned ankle, and he muttered something undecipherable into the pillow. I patted an uninjured patch of shoulder and made my way out to the sitting room.

Little Olivia had fallen straight to sleep in Basil's armchair, and Mr Flaversham was just finishing a pot of tea, the crumbs of one of Mrs Judson's excellent cheese crumpets evident on the plate at the side table. The ruined cushions from Basil's shooting experiment were still in evidence, the uppermost still bearing powder burns. Those I brought into the bedroom, laying them on top of the blankets to brace Basil further. His whiskers twitched, but otherwise he was utterly still, perhaps for the first time since I'd met him. At his shoulder blade and along his ribcage the deepest scratches were already beginning to spot with red through the gauze.

Mrs Judson brought us extra linens, and a fresh pillow for Mr Flaversham, without the smell of gunpowder. Olivia was shifted to the bed in the spare bedroom, and Flaversham retired to the settee, while I drew a chair from the sitting room into Basil's bedchamber, intending to keep watch for the remainder of the night. 

Perhaps half an hour after we had turned down the gas, I was roused from my reading by the creak of the settee, and then the far door. After such a night, such a week, little wonder that Flaversham was unwilling to sleep with his daughter outside of arms reach. Indeed, I imagine Olivia felt much the same way, the thin walls carried her terrified squeak when she woke from whatever nightmares that evil rat had visited upon her. 

Basil's paws twitched, and he seemed to wake at her scream, but only half roused himself, and sank back as Flaversham's voice came low through the wall, soothing and indistinct. Basil's eyes were glassy, unfocused, and an unhealthy heat was building underneath his fur.

I made my way to the top floor of Basil's apartments, both to refresh myself, and to refill the bedside pitcher. The cold water chased the last effects of the drugged stout from my brain, leaving only that strange clarity of the early dawn, seen from an unslept night. On my way back to Basil's room, I stopped to retrieve my coat, with my notebook in its inner pocket.

Basil caught my hand as I wet a facecloth in the basin, but quieted when I reassured him the case was solved, and slipped back into sleep as easily as I'd hoped. I settled back in my chair, resolved to set the whole adventure to paper, for Basil was the most remarkable, and perhaps the most impressive mouse I had ever met.


End file.
